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Angela Rose: Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Survivors.org Podcast. I'm your host, Angela Rose. I'm the founder of PAVE, promoting awareness victim empowerment. And our aim here is to help survivors thrive after trauma. This episode is sponsored by Color Street. And Color Street is a creative beauty brand with limitless possibilities. I am so excited about our guest today. Sheri Johnson is a clinical director for an online private practice. She's also a registered social worker in BC and Ontario, and a rapid resolution therapy practitioner from Vancouver, Canada with over 12 years of clinical experience. She's now the ED of the Institute for Survivors of Sexual Violence. Welcome Sheri.

Sheri Johnson: Thank you so much for having.

Angela Rose: So Sheri, tell us a little bit about the Institute for Survivors of Sexual Violence.

Sheri Johnson: So the Institute for Survivors of Sexual Violence, or we call it ISSV is a nonprofit organization based out of Florida. So this was an organization that existed for quite some time, but it was pretty dormant. And so, during the pandemic, a group of us got together myself and some colleagues and developed it. We met once a month for a couple of years, and then we launched this past October, 2021. And so our mission is to serve survivors and provide effective rapid treatment for PTSD and the emotional and psychological impact that that people who are survivors can live with. So, our mission is to provide free therapy for these survivors, and we're doing a pilot project in Florida right now. And then we hope to expand internationally in the next like year or so hopeful.

Angela Rose: That is so exciting and PAVE is so proud to partner with you for this work. I'd love to chat with you for a little bit about why it works. I think one thing that really struck me about the rapid resolution therapy is that so many survivors oftentimes, we have to go back through our trauma when we go to therapy. We have to talk about it. We have to rehash it. And oftentimes, as I'm sure from your clients, Sheri, that can oftentimes be very triggering for survivors. So can you talk a little bit about how this is different and why it's so effective?

Sheri Johnson: Yes. That is exactly why I learned rapid resolution therapy, because I know that so many people don't complete therapy or they find therapy for sexual violence to be sometimes even more painful than the experience itself. And so I know people in my life and clients and patients that I've seen over the years just live and struggle in silence. They just feel hopeless that there might not be something that could really truly get them to a point where they can freely live without these symptoms and just the emotional disturbance that can come with a traumatic event like that. So, RRT is what I would call a brain based approach.

So, it brings together components. Some evidence based approaches to therapy, but some innovative neuroscience based techniques as well that are designed to rewire the way that the mind processes information and how the data is stored in our brains. So, it doesn't require that reliving and retelling. In fact, as a therapist, I don't even need to hear the story. We can still do just as effective work which is what makes it so special, because again, people aren't having to rehash that trauma and relive the experience. It's just this wonderful artful process that is painless, and it can even be fun and lighthearted at times.

Angela Rose: And I remember when we first started talking that you were seeing clients and other practitioners were seeing clients with a lot of changes in their mindset as little as one therapy session. Can you speak to that?

Sheri Johnson: Yes. RRT is very I mean it stands for rapid resolution therapy, so it is very rapid. I would say that for somebody coming to me or to one of our therapists with the organization People are typically only needing one to two sessions. We offer up to three, but most of the time, people aren't even needing that third session because the type of work we're doing is just so effective. So, I know it sounds kind of surreal or too good to be true. And that's really what I thought when I first started learning RRT, but then I experienced it as a therapist, with all of my clients, I'd say I have pretty similar results with all of the people that I see who are survivors.

And we're taking data on the clients that are coming through ISSV and being treated. And the most people are coming in with severe levels of PTSD on the PTSD scale and usually severe to moderate depression, but the results after two weeks after the treatment are zero PTSD across the board after one to two sessions. And usually, the depression has gone down from either severe to moderate or moderate to none or minimal. So it's amazing what we're seeing. It's really exciting. And that's why I'm really excited to share about this here.

Angela Rose: Oh, well, thank you so much for your work. That is incredible. And one thing that really struck me about your work and with this rapid resolution therapy is the notion of shame. I think universally, so many of us survivors, we experience so much shame after sexual trauma. I think it's the way society makes us feel. There's so many layers to this. And so one thing that really struck me about RT was the notion of removing the shame. Can you speak to that?

Sheri Johnson: Yes. That is one of my favorite things to treat because you're right. Shame is such a powerful emotion and it can affect all areas of your life after a trauma like that, your relationships just how you interact with the world and the things that you wanna accomplish. There's a very specific process that we, we do to assist somebody in clearing up the shame. And I would say and it's, it is my favorite because just watching that transformation right before my eyes is just unbelievable. And I almost wanna like cry at the time because it's just so beautiful watching somebody's shame go from 10 out of 10 to like, I can't feel it.

And we always do baseline checks as well. So I check how they're feeling. make sure that I get a real good sense of sort of the level of shame or the level of whatever it is they're experiencing. And then I do a baseline check afterwards and Every time it's they can't feel the shame. They can't even find it. And that's, I think one of the most powerful parts of what we do with RRT is that we can get rid of that shame. I've had people have. Some deep rooted shame from stuff that went on when they were a child, maybe they were molested or some, something went on whatever it may be and they carry that shame throughout their whole life.

And so, when they experienced freedom from that shame, it's like this unbelievable freedom, and it's really hard to explain, but it's amazing to watch. So I feel really honored to be able to do this work. And I feel so lucky that I found this work because it is an emerging modality. Lots of people are training in it, but it's one of those modalities that we're working on getting more and more research out there on so that more and more practitioners can adopt this modality into their practices.

Angela Rose: And is there any like unintended negative consequences after this type of therapy? I know I personally did EMDR and it was a wonderful experience for me to remove a lot of these PTSD symptoms, but it was very taxing physically, spiritually, emotionally. So do you kind of see that with your clients? Do you tell them to maybe schedule some self care afterwards? Or what do you see after?

Sheri Johnson: Well, that is a really good question. A lot of my clients before they come and see me, they ask, oh, what's the difference between RRT and EMDR? EMDR is very well known now. And a lot of people are using it for PTSD, but it does require quite a lengthy commitment, a lot of the times for a trauma or something like this. So, it's not taxing in that way where you're having to go back over and over and kind of retell the story or re go over and over it in your mind, like with the EMDR. Although that can be really effective, as you're saying. RRT, you're just kind of going in for one session and then you're done.

So it's not like you have to commit to this long drawn out thing where you're experiencing that. Okay. I gotta go back. I gotta prepare myself. It's just kind of one or two sessions and it's done. In terms of the way people feel afterwards, I always do a follow up and a check in with people. But sometimes I find like specifically with the more severe PTSD cases, a lot of times people. They want a follow up session, but just to ask me how I did that. So, and we're doing a lot of laughing and that's also the thing that's different about RRT is that there is that sort of lighthearted kind of fun vibe that sometimes we can have because we're keeping them above board the whole time.

so my goal in a session is to see somebody stay totally present with me the entire time. If I see them telling, starting to tell a story and kind of get into this memory, I bring them right back up with me because it's when they're experiencing negative emotions about something, it's their mind thinking that it's happening or reacting as if it's happening. So if I can keep them on like above board the whole time and totally present with me while we're working on this thing, then their mind gets the message that it's not happening anymore. And doesn't need to have these same reactions anymore.

Angela: That's incredible. So I know with PTSD, if you can talk a little bit about how our bodies feel like there's something that's a threat when it's not, and that can be very exhausting with that fight or flight. So can you just educate some of the listeners that might not really understand PTSD and how that manifests itself for trauma survivers.

Sheri Johnson: Yeah. So when something happens to somebody that's a traumatic, if somebody was raped, for example Normally, if we have normal things happen in a day, the data goes in and it processes into storage on the shelf. But then let's say data like a rape or something really traumatic. That's not normal, typical data. It goes in, but it's misshapen. And so it kind of gets stuck and clogged in the drain if you will. And so it doesn't process through on the shelf like normal. And so, let's say like with the mind the mind draws connections between patterns of association and structural similarity. So let's say, there's this guy who is a veteran, he went through some really hard times in the war.

He comes home, he's with his family, and they're about to listen to the fireworks at the window. and they're all excited. And then the first one goes off and everyone's like, wow. And they look around and where does he go? He's under the kitchen table. And you're thinking, well, is he afraid of the fireworks? No, he's not afraid of the fireworks, but there was some structural similarity to the sound of the fireworks to what he had experienced during the war. So, his mind not have having this unprocessed data clump that didn't get processed through it, read similar as same, and then caused his mind to react as if it was happening still.

So the goal of our RRT or any kind of trauma therapy for PTSD is to get that data processed. So the mind has been processing the data as if it's still happening, causing things like replaying the night, like nightmares or flashbacks in order that you would do something about it or stop it from happening because the mind still thinks it's happening. Cause it wasn't processed through, if that makes sense.

Angela Rose: Absolutely. And that's, I've never heard it talked about like a clog. And I think that's a really powerful way to talk about it because I. That myself and so many survivors, and I don't know the data, but I know a vast number of survivors of sexual trauma have some symptoms of PTSD, it's so exhausting too, because you, you feel like,for me it was shadows. I would see a shadow when I would constantly feel like there was somebody behind me when there wasn't, but my body felt like there was. And so I know for so many survivors of trauma and I think specifically sexual violence.

I don't know if you work with domestic violence survivors as well, but from my work with DV and SV, and human trafficking, like w with all these types of trauma, oftentimes we do see a lot of PTSD. Do you think that's true for all types of interpersonal violence or does it maybe more with a certain type of violence?

Sheri Johnson: Well, I think you can have PTSD from even the smallest trauma. It really anything it's just, there's so many components that need to be in place in order for your mind to process information in a specific way. Like somebody could go through back to the veteran example, somebody can go through a horrific trauma in the war and then come back and be okay, and then go through some other trauma, maybe a minor car accident and then have horrible PTSD for driving. Why did the mind, react fine with all of this other stuff he was seeing an d react, in a significant way with this maybe smaller trauma. There's just a lot of components that can come together in any one moment.

Like if somebody has something happened to them when they are like I think they're, you know, lots of people can experience date rape where they're maybe not fully conscious. And so they're in that kind of unconscious or semi conscious state, and that's a really vulnerable mental state to be in. And so, information going in about what's happening to you. You're kind of aware of it, but you're not really able to process it. It's going into that state of mind that might be even considered as hypnotic. So right before you're falling asleep or that semi dream state, that is a very vulnerable state. So you can be very influenced. You can be very vulnerable to having things sort of, process in a deeper way. So, if that makes sense, sure if I'm making sense.

Angela Rose: Yeah, no, that does make sense. And I really appreciate you saying that it doesn't have to be some huge trauma that could bring PTSD symptoms about could be something that people might say is a small event. Why do I feel this way? But there's so many nuances to the way the mind works that I love that you said it doesn't have to be some huge event. It could be something smaller. Because I think so many survivors, we blame ourselves. Well, why, why do we feel this way? Or why can't we get better?

And so, I think it's important for every survivor to understand it is not their fault and what happens in the mind of a traumatized person, it really does impact the way in which we are triggered by things or could be a sound or smell or whatever it is to bring us back to that moment of feeling powerless. So thank you for sharing that. If, what advice do you have for survivors that might be looking to heal?

Sheri Johnson: Well, I think what comes to mind is just a lot how I know a lot of people that have come to me have already tried so many different ways to heal, whether it be different therapy modalities or their own, you know, healing techniques or maybe yoga and meditation and talking to people or changing their life in some way. So I think there's a lot of different things and people who come to me are often feeling kind of hopeless or tired. And so, I would just say, if anyone here is listening and experiencing these things, there is hope and there are ways to heal from this. And one thing that really struck me as I was learning about sexual violence earlier in my career and in my training is that a lot of the research and books that are actually very well known and even considered revered among my colleagues in this community is this idea that once you've gone through a trauma like this, a sexual violence, a rape or something like that, that you are never the same.

That you are never able to fully heal or return to the way your life was before. And I think that is such a devastating thing for people to hear, even from their own therapists. And so, I could not disagree anymore. because I've seen how people are able to heal and live an even better life than before. So I just want people to know there is hope and not every modality is like 100% best for every single person. But if you're interested and curious, check out RRT.

Angela Rose: And how can they find out more information?

Sheri Johnson: So, we have a website for our nonprofit it's called clearandfree.org. And so you can fill out the contact form and then receive free RRT from one of our licensed therapists. And then there's also, if you want to learn more about RRT in general, there's the rapidresolutiontherapy.com as well. And then my website for my online practice, we specialize in RRT as well. it's, therapy,vancouver.ca.

Angela: Wonderful. Well, Sheri, you are such a beacon of light and hope and thank you so much for being with us today. We are so grateful and for all of our listeners, remember to love yourself, support each other and together we can change the world. Join us next time for another episode of Survivors.org Podcast. Thank you.

Sheri Johnson: Thank you.